Noba at the Movies

The Machinist (2004)

Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez Gijon, John Sharian, and Michael Ironside. Directed by Brad Anderson.


So about a year ago a girl who works in my office told me about this movie, and I stuck it on my Netflix queue. After months of watching other movies, many of which sucked (see: Constantine, The Village, and The Dukes of Hazard), I finally saw this masterpiece with Christian Bale.

The premise is this - Bale plays Travis Reznik, a machine operator who is suffering from insomnia. Now I'm not talking staying up late like a college student - the poor bastard hasn't slept in a year. His physical health is abominable - Bale lost 60 pounds for the role and is so scarily skinny that he makes Adrian Brody in The Pianist look like freakin' Dr. Phil. Bale is known not only as the buff new Dark Knight of last summer's Batman Begins, but also the yuppie sociopath in American Psycho. Therefore, to see him like this is shocking. His ribs poke out like a concentration camp survivor. The top of his spine is visible between his shoulder blades. His face is sunken in. To Bale's credit, however, his performance manages to surpass the visual shock of the crash diet he must have gone on. Though we don't learn much of what drives Reznik until the end of the film, he still makes you curious and interested in this very different film character.

So back to the plot - Reznik is lost and looking in this film to find out why he cannot sleep. He spends the wee hours of the night at an airport coffee shop flirting with the pretty waitress (Sanchez-Gijon), or spending time with a prostitute with a heart of gold (Leigh), providing one of the only cliches we see in this movie. Meanwhile, his gaunt appearance and accidents in the workplace cause his bosses and co-workers to be suspicious of him. As if his paranoia and mental health were not already on the line, Reznik begins to become acquainted with a mysterious co-worker whom he knows only as Ivan. For the rest of the film, this boogeyman character stalks Reznik - yet no one else believes he exists. Are the effects of the paranoia starting to result in hallucination? This and many questions are answered in the film's fantastic ending.

This movie's ending may rank at the top with any other film in recent memory. I'm talking the caliber of The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, and the movie's most comparable cousin - Memento (you can't watch The Machinist and not be reminded of that movie. Interestingly, Christopher Nolan directed both Memento and Batman Begins, and will be pairing up with Bale again on both a sequel to the latter and the upcoming film The Prestige). The ending does what it's supposed to do - tell you what's really going on, answer all the questions, and leave you feeling like you did more than watch a movie - you discovered one. Yes, you find out why he can't sleep - and the answer to that question is as compelling as the crazy turn of events that get you there. The Machinist is definitely going in my DVD collection, and if you're in Blockbuster or setting up your Netflix queue and watch anything else, you're a moron.

OK, I might have oversold it there, but I really enjoyed this movie. Check it out.

Rating: 9/10 stars
Reminds Noba Of (If you like "The Machinist," you'll love . . .): Memento, The Bourne Identity, Requiem for A Dream

"The Machinist IMDB page

The Netflix page

Sample Reviews

"The director Brad Anderson, working from a screenplay by Scott Kosar, wants to convey a state of mind, and he and Bale do that with disturbing effectiveness. 4/5 Stars" - Roger Ebert

"Christian Bale's 63-pound weight loss makes this bleak thriller one of the few movies to scale the barrier between chilly fantasy and authentic cinematic nightmare." - Stephen Holden, NY Times